Today, or this week, or however long it takes to determine the winners of this election, we have not reached the end of the movie. When we know the election results we will not find either that evil is vanquished nor that hope has prevailed.

The script is not all written. What I am counting on today, and in the days and weeks and months and years to come, is you my neighbors, my family, my friends. For we are the people who will determine how the moral arc of the universe will bend.

Today, like every day, is the beginning of our work to care for the poor and the oppressed, to protect those who are attacked, and stand  up for justice and liberty for all. Today, like everyday, our work will be harder than we hoped, and more important than we realized. There are many plot lines still to come.

For some of us that work is internal, to heal from the trauma we have been handed, and to figure out how to keep from passing that trauma on. Thank you for that voiceover work you do. For some of us the work is interpersonal, raising children, educating others, providing healing for our bodies and our minds, and our souls. Thank you for the background scene setting that you do. For some of us the work is systemic, improving and defending the institutions created to protect the least of these our siblings and neighbors. Thank you for the work hidden in the back office, and the great protest scenes that keep everyone else engaged. All this work will be hard in the coming days. Keep to it as best you can.

For those of us that identify as Christian, the work includes the peculiar requirement that we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. This is not about backing down from our values. It is about believing that every person can be transformed by God’s unending love. Our hardest work is passing on God’s love and the most important in the coming days. Sometimes we look like the person in plaid pants, completely out of place in the scene. Still we keep on.

We must show up in many ways. This is a time to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. A time to look for ways of healing while repudiating violence. A time to stand firm in righteousness without giving up our gentle souls.

Please celebrate or mourn our election. And then find a way to be the people who will change our world to one where everyone has a right to live. We keep the movie is playing.

In technology, the 1.0 release sounds like the first iteration, but often it is really the release of a product at the deadline, whether or not is done. The new idea is offered to the public and the users report back their experience: what works and what does not. This may or may not be a good idea in technology, you want the app you paid for to work, right?

But I'm beginning to think that it is a great idea for church. Too often we spend our time trying to perfect a new idea before we've even gotten input as to whether others want what we have to offer.
Why not get started, and then find out from the users what should be different? Let them tell us, and let us listen, to what works and what doesn't, and make adjustments accordingly. Why do we presume that we know all of what others want from this new program we are creating? If it is meant to serve others (and I hope what we are doing is meant to serve others) then we need to know what those "others" are looking for. "They" probably know more about their needs than we do.

We should be involving others in all of the new programs we are creating, but it seems good to also go ahead and release some of our great ideas into the wild. Lets get started, and then get feedback, and make changes.

In fact, wouldn't it be cool if the church always was version 1.0? What would it mean if we assumed that changes are needed, fixes are required, that the whole church organization would benefit from being renovated? We say this sometimes, but usually not until our structures are so entrenched it would be destructive to make even small changes. Church 1.0 would be open to constant adjustment.

What if tweaking is forever?

It is popular in the church circles I hang with, to talk about the future of church as church 2.0. Someone will invariably reply, no we should get to 3.0. The idea they are trying to express is that we need completely new forms of church for this time and place. This is true.

But do churchy folk have any idea how old version 3.0 is? Most computer programs are long past version 2 or 3. It makes me think of the pastor who talked about covid bringing churches into the twentieth century. It was great that we finally learned how to use (some) technology, but the rest of the world is already in the twenty-first century. Church 2.0 was created in the year 300. We should surely be up to version 10, or 28, or 593 by now? Right?

Instead of looking for the right version of updated church we should be, what if we imagined church that is never finished. What if we asked what need to change every time a new person walks in the door, and again every time a person leaves. What if we changed when the neighborhood changes? What if we spoke the language of our neighbors, of young people, of the newest ideas of our culture?

To be church 1.0, to be a beta version of church, we have to be trying something new. For small churches, one new thing at a time, but certainly one and then another. When we start a new dinner, or pantry, or moving ministry, or education series, or community conversations, whatever new ministry, we should start it with the idea that we don't know yet what it should look like.
Get started! And then meet the people who come and ask them how it should be changed. Change it up next week with the fixes offered by those present. Heck, ask those attending to come and help with the fixes. Ask what should be for dinner, and are you meeting at the right time, and should the tables be set up like this, or like that. Is the serving line in the right order? Are you advertising in the right places? Assume all your planning is just to find the starting point. Most of it will need to change.

And then change it!

Church 1.0 has some foundational beliefs--that everyone is loved by God--and some foundational practices--we listen for Christ's good news in our lives. Everything else can be changed.
Here are some things you might change: Sunday worship. Hymns. Organ and Piano. Choir. What music the choir sings. Sunday school. Coffee hour. Council meetings! The treasurer's report. When you gather, how you gather.

​Welcome to church 1.0. Open for editing.

Small churches, or, as I describe the churches I serve, micro-churches end up spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to be church. Many of the things we grew up with--Sunday School, Choir, crowded holiday services, a pastor (or two!) at every service--are no longer options for some churches. The advantage of those changes is that we spend time asking ourselves "what is church?"
And so we list some important traits of church: that it is relational, missional, focused on Jesus Christ, that it is communal, and gathers in a sacred space, it is spirit filled, it is incarnational, it is eucharistic.
Not all congregations will choose all of those words, and many congregations add other descriptors. My ordination is with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and I went to an Episcopal seminary; for me church is definitely Eucharistic. We are a group of people that gather around a ritualistic meal.
There are many challenges for a small, eucharistic church, and one of them is how to share our meal when we have limited resources. Our recent COVID years with online church further challenged our experience of Eucharist.
And so churches are wresting. If you do not have a priest, and are not having Eucharist, is the gathered community no longer church? How often do you need to have Eucharist to be church? Can the Eucharist be in the form of the reserved sacrament from another parish? Can the person who blesses the sacrament be visiting clergy, and if so, what does that do to the definition of church as "relational"? Can the elements be blessed through the miracle and zeroes and ones of Zoom? Are bagels and coffee appropriate substitutes for bread and the fruit of the vine?
There is a no single right answer to these questions, but it is right, and necessary for small parishes to have discuss them, and to decide what is the right answer for their diocese, their geographical location, and for their local community. 
What small and micro-congregations need are creative alternatives. In one of my congregations, I bless the elements in one town while they watch, together, in the sanctuary, on zoom, and then we eat, remotely, together. In another, once a month they have breakfast church with a discussion sermon. One of the lay leaders has been authorized by the council to bless the sacrament--usually some sort of coffee cake and orange juice or coffee.
In Episcopal churches sometimes a lay person trained and ordained, so that their home congregations can share the Eucharist. In others an ordained Missioner rotates among several churches, so that once every three, or five, or eight weeks, each congregation gets their turn with the Eucharist. Yoked parishes often have the pastor visiting several churches on Sunday morning. Merged parishes may switch between which building they use. My two parishes gather out-of-doors for a combined Easter in the lovely (but cold) Cathedral of the Pines. Dinner churches bless the elements, but share an actual meal.
All of these are strategies for solving the problem of Eucharist, but the most important element is the discussion. What is church? What does the Eucharist mean to your congregation? How often will you have it, and how will we make that happen. Small and micro-congregations grow stronger when the have wrestled with their theology in order to make a theological decision about what it means to be a Eucharistic people.